Weather up, Dudes!

Hurricane Arthur has come and gone and most people around here hardly noticed. It nailed us though, came through the Domestitech outpost in northern Maine like a freight train. However, we had some prior warning and real time bulletins while we watched the trees fall all around us. We got this information in two ways. One on the older weather radio technology with S.A.M.E alerts and the second was through WEA messages on our cell phones. That’s a cool technology, the first time you hear one come through it will definitely surprise you.

The good old fashioned weather radio

Weather radio is just about the dullest broadcasting we ever hear. I think they must have a special department to keep it as mono-toned as possible. Well, it’s boring until you need it, and then our ears are glued to the speaker. The latest enhancement S.A.M.E.(Specific Area Message Encoding) alerts allow the National Weather Service to send specific messages to individual areas. For instance people in New Jersey get the alerts for the mid-atlantic and not those for the mid-west or southwest. In fact S.A.M.E alerts are county specific, so those of us in Morris county will hear alerts just for our specific area.

We tested and owned several of these type of radios and currently we like the Sangean CL-100. This is a programmable AM/FM clock radio with enhanced weather capabilities. The CL-100 runs on batteries which is very handy in case the weather your listening to knocks out your power, or an included AC adapter, It has two built in wake alarms and automatically sets it’s own the time for the clock. In the AM/FM radio mode there are 5 presets for each band, any of which can be used as the alarm station. Each alarm has it’s own.

In weather mode the CL-100 can either sound an alarm and show the event on it’s display or, in “voice” mode it will play the voice portion of the alert and on the screen. Most alerts can be defeated so if you live on a mountain you can get the CL-100 to skip things like the the alert “siren” on flood warnings. You’ll still see the warning, you just don’t have to listen to the “siren.” There’s no skipping warnings like “Tornado” no matter how you feel about them. The CL-100 is a small versatile clock radio and like most Sangean products works really well and for a long time. It’s nice to have a solid dual function weather radio that does more than wake your wife up in the middle of the night to let her know there’s a “Marine advisory.”

Prentiss Gray is a writer and stay at home Dad with 27 years in the information systems and technology business. His favorite saying is “If you have to read the manual to use it, I don’t want one.” He can be reached via his website GrayResearch.net. More of his work can be seen in his Patch blog.